Why Are We All So Sleep Deprived?

Amrita Ghosh and Bhakti Shringarpure explore the sleep crisis impacting our entire world. Statistics about bad sleep are through the roof and sleep has become more than a self-help or social justice issue; it is actually a subject of human rights concerns. As we go through our daily life either a little fatigued or sometimes dead tired, the big questions here are how, when and why did everything start going wrong with our collective sleep? Sleep advocate, researcher and humanist thinker Ruhi Snyder brings sharp insights to the table and explains that our age of hyper-capitalism and shift work has completely destroyed circadian rhythms. Our society demands nonstop productivity, individualist lifestyles and pressure on the self as structures of communal living have also come apart. Snyder reminds us of a different time when naps were encouraged and doom scrolling on phones did not exist. The episode also brings special attention to the plight of working mothers who have to cope with the double yoke of neoliberalism as well as pervasive patriarchal structures.